Jul 3, 2012

Does your partner ask you to hand your pay check over to her at the end of the month? Does she look at the slips and what you have bought with your own money and demand that you give it to her? Does she come to your place of employment and threaten to tell your colleagues that you are gay if you do not do what she wants? Does she further threaten your friends that she will force them out of the closet too and make them own up to their sexual preference?

Financial and sexual abuse

• This is economic abuse as well as harassment. No one has a right over your finances; it is yours and yours only to control unless you have signed an agreement whereby she has been appointed in that capacity.

• You also have full rights over your children’s needs and they should be taken care of.

• Don’t be talked into or threatened by your same sex partner to hand your money over to her.

• Be aware of identity theft where your partner has no way of finding out and using your personal details to withdraw money on your accounts.

• Do not treat your partner as a sexual object and criticize her performance in bed.

• Do not withhold sex to make your partner pay for something which she did not agree to.

• Wear protection so that you do not infect your partner and do not be angry if she does not want to have sex for fear that she will be infected.

• If she beats you up for any reason at all report it to the authorities. Don’t be afraid of repercussions as such a person will make life hard for you and you will regret staying on.

• Disagree strongly if she wants you to have sex with other people and either wants you to watch and be a voyeur, or have threesomes, or partake in any bestial acts you don’t want to be part of.

• If your partner rapes you, report the incident and take all the necessary precautions to check yourself out with a doctor, get out of the relationship, and report her to the police.

You are a young girl very embedded in the teachings of the church, and decide to remain chaste until your wedding night. When the celebrations are over and you and your partner go to bed, you discover that he is not a man but a woman. You are shocked and feel betrayed as you had followed the commandment not to commit adultery and this is the result. You are also angry with your partner as you feel shame and rejection and now despise your belief system which you feel had set you up.

What do you in such an instance? And how could your partner have kept this from you? And who is to blame; your partner, you, or the church who said no sex before marriage? While this is a drastic and sinful betrayal, all of you are responsible for your own actions. You are not on the Jerry Springer show where stories of betrayal are the order of the day. This is real life. You have gone to church with your partner. You have met with their family. Everyone just assumed that you knew.

What is your part in this and what do you do now? If you are comfortable discovering on your wedding night that your partner is of the same sex and you do not mind, there is nothing to do and nothing to explain. Perhaps your partner even thought that you knew. Maybe deep down you even had a feeling about it or suspected. Whatever it is you have been hugely betrayed and have every right to get an annulment if you so wish.

Here is the big question: do you bring it up with your pastor at the church and ask him how this could have been avoided? Do you feel betrayed now by God and your friend because you did what was asked of you, and were deceived because you did not have pre marital sex which would have made the discovery earlier? People are allowed to try products before they buy; why can’t they apply the same technique before marriage? This writer is not advocating pre marital sex, but in the same breath would it not have been better to have a trial period before marriage where couples can get out of a deceitful arrangement if they have to?